Drawing a breath, he launched himself from the wagon and ran off to find Retzu under what cover the steam cloud provided.
Enchanted arrows and magic bolts flew overhead as Jaren ran, calling to mind stories that Sal had told him concerning embattled cities in his own world, with such odd names as Mogadishu and Jerusalem. Jaren ducked and dodged around anything that would offer a moment’s respite, often stumbling into messengers running the other way with orders. One such runner told Jaren that Retzu had fallen back to what remained of the village green, and was commanding the battle from there.
Jaren dashed into the street and sprinted for the green, fire and lightning exploding around him every step of the way. As he reached the dais, a near miss struck the ground at his feet, launching him into the air.
He was caught mid-flip by unseen hands, and was held for a moment, suspended over the green. The unseen hands carried him to cover behind the dais where he was set safely down near a young amethyst. As he touched down, Jaren felt the grip release him. The amethyst’s flaming violet eyes dimmed as he released his magics. Looking around, Jaren found Retzu and his company of commanders hunkered near by.
“Good of you to join us, milord mage,” the assassin quipped. Retzu and his commanders were hunched over a map hastily scrawled in the dirt, apparently taking advantage of the lull between messengers to discuss their battle strategies.
“Yeah, well, I was busy,” the mage returned casually has he shuffled over.
“As I was saying, our forces are hemmed in here, here, and here,” he said, using a dagger to indicate various locations on the map. “And they’re entrenched here and along the ridge, and have moved in over here.”
“So we’re stuck,” Menkal summarized bluntly. “They essentially have us surrounded. No way to advance, no retreat.”
To anyone else, he would appear to have completely given up, but the assembled minds knew better. The sapphire was playing his role as an intellectual catalyst to the hilt, stating the obvious so that they didn’t need to waste precious time dwelling on it.
Retzu ignored the negative comment, and instead turned to Jaren. “Since you’ve decided to drop in—pardon the pun—you might as well be of some use. What have you seen?”
The emerald, still panting from his run, vainly licked dry lips. “Probably nothing you don’t already know. They still have a lot of Reds and Violets, one or two Greens. Thankfully, I haven’t seen any Granites remaining. I think we got all of them. The mundane guards are blocked by a lava flow—don’t ask—but that won’t hold them long.”
“We’ve got to get behind them somehow, attack them from their flank,” Retzu said to no one in particular.
“Levitation?” the young amethyst suggested.
Retzu shook his head. “We don’t have enough amethysts to carry a large enough group. Besides, we’d be out in the open, defenseless. They’d pick us off like so many quail.”
Jaren agreed. “Our people would have to be grouped together for you to levitate them all, and it would only take one well-placed lightning bolt to fry the lot. Too bad Sal’s not here,” he sighed. “He’s quite resourceful.”
“I was meaning to ask you about him,” Retzu said.
The emerald shrugged. “The last time I saw him, he was leading a charge up the ridge. That’s where the Earthen Rank stationed their mounted support mages. While the mundanes, emeralds, and rubies advanced, a few rubies stayed behind with their amethysts and granites...” He paused, something clicking in his mind.
Granites...
Granite!
“I’ve got an idea.”
***
“You’re insane!” Keth accused, unconsciously wincing at the boom of a nearby lightning strike.
Jaren started to explain his plan again when Menkal spoke up. “Look, we know you haven’t been properly trained, but right now we have no other option. You have the ability, and that’s what counts. How do you think the first mages learned? Necessity and imagination.”
“I don’t know,” the granite said dubiously.
Irritated, Senosh grabbed the granite’s arm and pulled him close. “What’s the worst that could happen, boy?” the ruby demanded, his gemstone eyes flashing blood red within their ebony border. “We might die. Might. But if you don’t give it a go, we die for certain. If even one of those support mages get back to the Highest, we could be seeing reinforcements on our doorstep in—what? A week or so? What about a division of granite soldiers? They could be here in less than a day. If we are ever to escape before the second wave comes—”
“Alright,” Keth said through his teeth, wrenching his arm from the ruby’s grip. “Alright, I’ll do it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Hastily, Retzu, his commanders, and the mages formed a circle around Keth, locking hands on one another and on the granite mage. Now that his idea had actually taken life, Jaren was having second thoughts, though he refused to voice them. Grimly, he swallowed what bile threatened to make its way to his mouth and looked around the circle. Not surprisingly, he saw a similar fear etched into every face. Menkal’s mustaches trembled. Retzu licked his lips nervously. Even Senosh’s ebony skin was ashen with fear. A dozen faces, leaders and volunteers all, shared a look of barely contained terror.
Except for one. The man in the center was the picture of grim determination.
The granite’s eyes were closed in concentration. Occasionally, the muscles in his face would give an involuntary twitch. His grip would tighten on the shoulders of the men he touched. His arm bunched with building tension.
Jaren heard a grinding sound. At first, he thought it was the granite gnashing his teeth. But a quick glance around told the emerald the real story.
Beneath the group, the ground rippled, rocks and dust flowing from Keth’s feet in ripples. Wave followed wave, lapping over Jaren’s feet like water.
Water?
As he watched in horror, the emerald’s feet disappeared into the ground. Melted into the ground, he would later amend. His ankle followed, then his shin. With the agonizing slowness of a toddler taking his first faltering steps, Keth lowered the circle of men into the ground.
Air drove from Jaren’s lungs as his chest became one with the earth. Try as he might, he couldn’t draw another breath. He panicked, struggled to free himself from the death grip his neighbors has on his hands. This proved fruitless. Already one with the earth—and his neighbors!—he could no more remove his fingers than he could fill his lungs. Unable to stop it, he watched as the ground steadily swallowed him whole.
As the earth covered his head, Jaren realized that he could “sense” the ground around him. He couldn’t see, of course, but he could feel every bit of grit that mingled with his body—with every body within the circle, in fact. It was a most curious sensation, startling him out of his panic. Now clear-headed, he discovered something else. Though still unable to breathe, it occurred to him that he didn’t need to. It was as if the granite’s magic had turned them all into living stone. Knowing what little he did about granite magic, it made a bizarre kind of sense.
Jaren sensed movement. Faster than he could track, soil and rock moved through his body. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t the dirt that was moving. It was him. He was struck with awe as he took all these new sensations in. He’d heard about such travel among granites. It was the basis of his whole plan, why they were all there together with Keth. But to actually experience it...? That was quite another matter entirely.
As swiftly as it began, the movement stopped. The group emerged from the dirt much easier that they went in. Jaren counted that to Keth’s growing confidence in his own abilities. Once more whole, the shaken men continued to hold each other’s hands in a death grip until, finally, they opened their eyes and saw that the ride was over. Ever the explorer, Jaren was flushed with the wonder of enlightenment, as was Menkal. All the others were simply flush with relief. Including Keth.
The granite bristled at any attempts at th
anks or congratulation, shouldering them all with cold practicality. “It had to be done” was all he would say.
Retzu took in their surroundings. “We’re at the far base of the ridge,” he said. “Japheth, can you see anything?”
The young amethyst who had snatched Jaren out of the air, reached out to his soulgem in response. His eyes flashed brilliantly for a moment as he scanned the hill, then dimmed. “There’s enemy troops there and there,” he indicated high on the ridge. “Lower than that, and the hill becomes too dense. I can’t see a thing.”
“Good enough,” Retzu nodded confidently. Having scouted out the area weeks before Caravan’s move there, Retzu was familiar with all the ridge’s nooks and crannies, so he knew exactly where the amethyst had indicated. He swiftly laid out the topography of the ridge for the others, stressing vantage points and hollows, noting where the other troops would be and the best way to get to them.
“You four are with me,” he said, indicating three of his commanders and a wicked-eyed ruby. “You four with Menkal. Keth and Senosh, you’re with Jaren. Remember, kill by stealth if possible. One cry of warning and the game is up.” Then, with a grim nod, he dismissed the group to their various assignments.
Senosh mounted the ridge swiftly, followed by Keth with Jaren bringing up the rear. The trio parted the underbrush with the ease of men used to living in the sanctuary of the deep forest. They barely made a sound as they pushed aside the thorny vines and brambles native to that part of the Vale, gliding silently over fallen leaves on their trek to the summit. What sound they did make was little more than a whisper, more than lost in the din of the battle before them. Once at the top, they were able to look out from behind the thick trunks of the area’s native trees, hidden from unfriendly eyes as they surveyed their targets below them.
The first entrenchment was about twenty yards down the slope. Five invaders—mages obviously, for they carried no weapons—hunkered down in a bowl shaped hollow, peeking over the lip every so often, looking for a shot. Spying a likely target, one of them hurled a magic bolt at an unsuspecting defender, then ducked back down. A moment later, one of his fellows did the same.
“The span is too great,” Jaren whispered. “They’ll spy us out before we even reach them, to say nothing of killing them quietly. We’ll have to take care of them from here.” He turned his attention back to the enemy quintet, and gathered the mana necessary to wield at the enemy mages from so far away.
“You may have to,” Keth said. Before Jaren could respond, the granite melted into the ground with a ripple.
“I can see controlling him will be a problem,” Senosh commented, his ruby eyes burning ominously. Jaren could only nod. Keth had limitless potential, but he would need to rein in his impulsive nature if he expected to live long enough to reach that potential.
Emerald and ruby eyes watched the hollow, not knowing what to expect from the young granite. Suddenly, two of the invaders stiffened, their mouths thrown wide in frozen screams. Jaren watched in horror as death—that’s the only way he could describe the blooming grey aura—hatched in the bodies of the mages. Starting at the small of the back, Jaren watched the spell spread throughout the body of each victim, completely unnoticed by the other invaders.
The death bloom thickened as it spread, encompassing the mages entirely. The aura gave one last burst of energy, and the bodies took on the consistency of cornstarch, crumbling to dust around two hands jutting from the ground.
The hands slid back into the ground with a ripple, just as the nearest invader turned to consult his fellows. His face twisted in shock and horror as he found only the ashen remains of his comrades.
He might have shouted a warning, but it died on his lips as a hand thrust from the ground, closing on his windpipe. Jaren watched again as grey death spread outward from the granite’s touch.
Galvanized by the sight, Jaren turned his attention to the next invader. Seeing the health of the man, the emerald altered it, shutting the man’s nervous system down. The distance between them caused the mana to run sluggishly, so the dying mage had more than ample time to slap numbly at his remaining colleague, vainly trying to warn him. Not that it would have mattered. His neighbor collapsed right next to him, the victim of heat stroke, courtesy of Senosh.
That was the way of it. The trio quietly made their way from hollow to hollow, entrenchment to entrenchment, dispatching the enemies they found there. Occasionally, they would peek out from cover and catch sight of one of the other groups going about their own work. Jaren even managed a glimpse of Retzu, silently employing the deadly arts for which he was so well known, and so feared. Gradually they began to notice the marked decrease in unfriendly fire. The attacks against the villagers grew less effective, more sporadic. Absently, Jaren was reminded of the last kernels of corn, popping in a kettle.
The remaining villagers noticed as well. Boldly, the first wave of defenders charged the hill. Some fell, cut down in a desperate hail of magic. Those who survived the crossfire stormed lower lying bunkers, overthrowing the current occupants and claiming the hollows as their own. Gaining a foothold, they charged the next enemy position, and the next, driving further and further uphill. Jaren, Senosh, and Keth continued downhill, further weakening the remaining Earthen Rank forces.
All at once the tide broke, and the invaders became defenders themselves. Deprived of their support mages, the invaders fell. No longer in need of stealth, the trio joined the attack, lustily slaughtering invaders at will.
By dusk, it was all over.
Chapter 15
“Apology accepted, centurion,” the Highest said pleasantly, stooping low to look full into the emerald’s gemstone eyes as they dimmed. The mage’s jaws worked soundlessly for a moment longer, vainly trying to drawn breath, before they ceased their movement entirely.
The Highest stood back up to admire his handiwork. The corpse lay flat on its back, legs skewed to one side where the centurion had dropped to his knees before capsizing altogether. A leather cuirass bearing the insignia of the Emerald Rank clung to the body in gore drenched tatters. Gleaming rib fragments jutted out of the cuirass at odd angles where the jagged points had lodged in the leather.
A massive hole gaped in the center of the cuirass. Beneath it, one might expect to find the emerald’s chest, battered and torn admittedly, but otherwise recognizable. Instead, the Highest found the pink inner lining of the emerald’s lungs, laid open like an exploded lighter-than-air device.
“Balloon,” he reminded himself, turning the age yellowed word over in his mouth. He chuckled a bit as the cooling corpse’s diaphragm twitched involuntarily, still reflexively trying to fill the ruptured lungs.
How he loved this method of killing. It was simplicity itself to grip the darkness within a victim’s lungs, expanding it until the chest exploded outward. It killed quickly and surely—but not so quickly that the victim couldn’t look down upon his gaping chest and see his own innards before he died. And those last few seconds of insane terror before the final darkness... A tremor of pleasure rippled through the Highest’s being at the thought of the emerald’s torture.
“Nestor,” he said softly, finally turning away from the corpse.
The brown-cloaked granite snapped to attention at the mention of his name. “Yes, Highest?” the voice came from beneath the cowl.
The obsidian smiled his approval of the guard. He liked Nestor. He was a good man and a loyal servant, ever going above and beyond the call of duty for the sake of his lord’s favor. He well deserved the Highest’s remembrance, the honor of being called by name.
“I grow weary of this rebel infestation,” he said. “They’ve just cost me a seasoned battle group, suffering only negligible losses themselves. It’s high time that they were dealt with.”
“Understood, Sire. Your orders?”
“I have plans for these rebels, but they cannot come to fruition so long as they remain nomadic. They must be driven to gather permanently in one place, to fortif
y, so that we may converge on them and crush them. Take a platoon of your best men and see to it that the matter is addressed.”
“Fifty granites, Sire?” the granite questioned. “Our dearly departed friend here estimated that the rebel forces numbered at least a thousand mages and mundane, not counting those who’d evacuated.”
“Yes, quite right,” the Highest said thoughtfully. “That does seem a bit unbalanced, doesn’t it? Still, I’m certain that the rebel party will at least provide your men some measure of amusement. Call it an indulgence for a chosen few.”
“Of course, Sire.” The guard bowed reverently and melted into the stone floor with barely a ripple.
The Highest watched as the ripple smoothed, the stone floor becoming solid once again. More than once, he’d secretly wished for such an ability. Ah, to be able to travel at will, to transport one’s self through the sheer power of one’s own desire. Such a thing would be... would be...
Less than useless to one such as myself, the Highest thought, once more batting down the foolish desire. What need had he of such a pointless power? What? He, the undisputed ruler of the world, to want for anything? Preposterous. He chuckled at the thought, one that was surely born of boredom. After all, having the fate of every soul on the planet in your hand for more than four thousand years, why... that kind of thing tends to get tedious.
He did have one regret, however. He should have made Nestor to get rid of the corpse that still lay in the middle of the floor, blood already congealing on the cooling flesh.
***
Nestor walked the halls of the barracks of the Granite Guard, seeking out his charges with purpose. His lord had given him an order. His life was to serve to the fullest extent of his ability.
So why did he feel uneasy?
Spying two favorites of his, he stopped the mages, ordering them to assemble in the central courtyard within the hour. The pair saluted smartly and departed at once to gather their gear, and Nestor was once again alone with his thoughts.
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